Reviews and rates the best recordings of 8,900 blues artists in all styles.

With informative biographies, essays, and "music maps, " this book is the ultimate guide to the best recordings in rhythm and blues. 20 charts.

The second edition of this acclaimed critical compendium doubles the number of albums reviewed, and features capsule biographies of hundreds more musicians, als

Arranged in sixteen musical categories, provides entries for twenty thousand releases from four thousand artists, and includes a history of each musical genre.

Mamie Smith's pathbreaking 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" set the pop music world on fire, inaugurating a new African American market for "race records." Not l